What would you do if your latest product release gets a recall due to safety reasons, and you then need to restore trust after fixing things up? Well, if you’re Boeing, and the product that you need to build more brand trust around is the 787 Dreamliner, you’d launch a real-time flight tracker of all 787s in the air at any time. And then add a Google Earth layer on it like an icing on the cake. And that’s exactly what’s been done.

Boeing launched earlier this month the 787 Flight Tracker Program. There are a couple of unique features. The first, is allowing viewers to see on what airlines and what routes the 787 is currently flying. But the more unique aspect is overlaying flight status information with Google Earth. Viewers see a 787 in the airline’s livery, flying over graphical landscape in Google Earth, in real-time, as you can see with the Japan Airlines screenshot below.

Once you’re on the site, select a specific airline flight, and click on “View in Google Earth”. From there, you can zoom in/out to see details of where your 787 flights are. Flight details are updated every 30 minutes, with data from FlightAware. What appealed to me as an aviation geek, were the passenger views, and the engine sounds, as if I’m really in the aircraft right now!

The 787 had already carried a million passengers before it was grounded for safety reasons. After the fix, Boeing needed to showcase that all aircraft are back in the air, and passengers are flying them around the world. And the 787 flight tracker program is a fun and engaging way to build back the brand trust.